Saturday, February 23, 2013

Saying Goodbye to Mozambique and Hello to India...Entries From One Final Adventure (Part 1)

I've been at home, in Madison, Wisconsin, for nearly two
months now. I've been removed from the place which once seemed so
much like a home, Mozambique, for almost three. The Earth has done a
quarter turn around the sun, and fall has faded into winter which is
now fading into spring. A lot has changed in my life and in the life
of Mozambique, undoubtedly, since the fateful day that I crossed the
border into South Africa at midnight and began a long reintegration
into the life I formerly knew in The United States of America.

A lot of people ask me whether it's been difficult to
integrate back into the first world life of technology, TV, cars,
running water and all sorts of other machines that do our work for us
here in America. To them, I usually have a somewhat unsatisfying
answer. No, not in the way I thought it would be. I made a pretty
seamless transition from bucket baths to hot showers, from the back
of a flatbed truck to the driver's seat in my own car, and from coal
burners to microwaves and ovens. What I didn't expect, however, was
that America would be a different place in January, 2013, from the
place that I left two years ago; not only from the reality of the
evolving technologies, but also in the way that I connected with and
viewed my own culture.

In this blog, however, I have a long way to go before
arriving in the USA and facing the iPhones and plasma TVs of
Americaland. This story begins in November, 2012, the day I crossed
the border to leave Mozambique, and three weeks before I would get
stamped in at the arrivals counter of Chicago's O'Hare airport. In
the weeks leading up to my arrival I dreamed that the person working
the immigration counter at O'Hare would be a guy like the Marlboro
man, an embodiment of American spirit. I imagined him with a big
mustache, a rugged, wind-torn face, and a hardened disposition, yet
also betraying traces of a good-hearted appreciation when there was
an American that passed through his gate that deserved recognition.
He would check my passport, realize that I had been gone for two
years teaching in Africa, shake my hand with his callused and
leathery palms and, with a deep enveloping drawl, say, “Welcome
home, son.” Well, unfortunately, that never happened. So spoiler
alert, the story today will end with an immigration official paging
through my passport with cursory interest, stamping it and
unceremoniously calling out, “Next!”.

Flashback to Mozambique. I was at the bus stop in
Maputo, getting ready to board an overnight bus to Johannesburg,
South Africa, where a plane would take me to Abu Dhabi, and then to
New Delhi. Given my history on overnight coach buses, and this being
the last form of ground transportation I would take in Africa, I was
a little jittery. Thoughts echoed in my head like, how fitting this
would be if this bus crashed on my final trip. In the days leading
up to that last exodus from Mozambique I counted down the times I
would have to get into a vehicle or a plane in Mozambique, as I was
terrified of both. There was an open back truck from Tete to
Chimoio, a road on which the car I was in once hit and presumably
killed a child, I never found out, a taxi to the airport, a two hour
flight to Maputo in a plane that I could probably lift with one arm,
and a taxi into town. Miraculously, I thought, I might make it out
of this country alive after all. But it all rested on one final bus.
I thought the transportation gods would punish my audacity for
booking the overnight bus rather than the day-time bus in order to
save time, wondering whether I had learned anything traveling around
Mozambique for two years, and from the time an overnight bus I was on
rear-ended a logging truck at full speed causing logs to coming
shooting through the windshields.

In order to cool my nerves I walked down the street one
last time while the bus was loading. I bought 10 plastic sacs of
roasted peanuts, my favorite Mozambican street food, from a lady on
the side of the road, which I hoped would last me until arriving in
America three weeks later. Then I bought a Ceres juice and a pot pie
for the road. These would be my last tastes of Mozambican food,
despite how un-Mozambican they are, and my last meal ever, I mused,
depending on how the bus ride panned out.

At midnight, when the bus arrived to the border to South
Africa, I got off, as is customary, and walked seamlessly and
unceremoniously out of Mozambique for the last time. As I walked
under the ostentatious “Welcome to South Africa” sign, a
luminescent omen of development in contrast to the Mozambican
darkness behind me, I saw the dank immigration buildings of
Mozambique morph into the modern processing facilities of South
Africa. I saw the walking Mozambicans morph into driving South
Africans, and I saw a country that ranks 184 out of 187 countries on
the UN's development index fade out behind me in favor of a richer
but somehow more drab South African landscape span out in front of
me.

Somehow, the bus arrived to the station in Johannesburg
without any mishap. After spending all day in the Johannesburg
airport, it was time to leave Africa. Hannah and I boarded a red eye
to Abu Dhabi, UAE, and arrived at 7 a.m. in a completely different
world. The Abu Dhabi airport was like a giant sphere with golden
tiles, a dome ceiling, and a McDonald's that blew us away. Hannah
left her pants on the plane, so while she negotiated with airport
staff to try to recuperate her lost articles, I stared unabashedly at
men greeting each other in Arabian thawbs, and women trailing them in
full burqas. It seemed incredible that I could go to sleep in Africa
and wake up the next morning in a completely different world. Who
were these people? How did I get here? I imagined how Christopher
Columbus would feel if he had been on the plane with me. They never
found her pants, so in her first foray into Abu Dhabi Hannah wore her
pajama pants, at least until we got the mall and she was able to buy
another pair of jeans.

Abu Dhabi had the feel of a city that was built
overnight. Modern glass skyscrapers seemed to have grown right out
of the sand. Chains like Pizza Hut, Subway and KFC flashed across
billboards and neon signs with a stylized Arabic script. A quick
survey of the skyline showed that it was a skyline composed of cranes
and scaffolding and that there were more skyscrapers in construction
that currently in existence. I couldn't figure out exactly how to
classify it. It was modern and impressive, yet unfinished. It
juxtaposed a stark traditionalism in the dress and customs of the
people with a daring modernism in the buildings, advertisements and
commercialism.

In Abu Dhabi we visited the National Mosque. It was a
massive pearly white structure with towering minarets and countless
white domes reaching up into the heavens. The whole building glowed
with the reflection of the sun as if it actually radiated heavenly
light. Not even Hannah's new jeans fit the dress code for entering
the mosque, however, so she was forced to wear a cloak, while I
walked around in shorts and a t-shirts. It seemed a little unfair.
It only rains an average of eight days a year in Abu Dhabi, and that
afternoon while we were waiting to take the bus back to the airport
the sky opened up and it started pouring on us. We waited for three
hours in the pouring rain as four different buses heading to the
airport went right by us without stopping. It wasn't a good start to
our three week adventure which would be heavy on bus and train
travel. It would have been par for the course in Mozambique, where
one expects travel to be impossible, but we thought we had escaped
our transportation woes when we flew out of Africa. We had no idea,
and we were about to arrive in India...

We finally made it back to the airport and took another
overnight flight to New Delhi after our flash tour of the Middle
East. The next morning we arrived in Indira Gandhi International
Airport, New Delhi. Before I tell you about that first chaotic day
in India, and it was chaotic, you must understand the two factors
that progressively compromised both Hannah's and my normally cheery
disposition on that day:

First, in the days and weeks leading up to our arrival
in India, we had tried vigorously to book as much of the trip as
possible in advance. We knew that, especially during the holiday
season, trains, buses and hotels would fill up quickly, and we had
been well-advised to book train tickets months in advance, if
possible. Well, how did that work out, Mozambique? It didn't.
Despite our greatest efforts, we booked almost nothing from
Mozambique. Whether it was our internet timing out, all of our
credit cards being denied, not being able to reply to confirmations
because we didn't have Indian telephone numbers, or any number of
other hurdles, we arrived in New Delhi with only a few tenuous
reservations made at various hostels, and no idea how we were going
to get from one city to the next because we had no train tickets.
This made the arrival more stressful, to say the least.

Second, neither of had slept in 72 hours. Here's a tip
if you planning to do a lot of traveling: eights hours on a plane or
a bus, is not the same thing as eight, or even six or four hours in a
bed. We took an overnight bus to Johannesburg, an overnight flight
to Abu Dhabi, and another overnight flight to New Delhi. As a
result, it had been over three days without any meaningful sleep. We
were one night removed from actually becoming zombies, and we arrived
in India at 7 am even though it felt like it had to be night time.

We mapped out our game plan on the plane: we would take
the reportedly new and easy to use
metro system to get from the airport to the train station. There we
would find a customer service agent and look into booking train
tickets for the next two weeks. From there we would walk to the
hotel that we booked online, which, according to our guide book, was
only a few blocks from the train station.

We made it through customs with our snazzy holographic
visas (one thing we were able to take care of ahead of time), and
followed the signs to the metro system. As we were walking across
the street in the direction of the metro an auto-rickshaw driver
called to us and said, “You know, the metro is closed for repair.
Where are you heading? I can take you there?” Well, I had been to
India before, and had recently read the section in Lonely Planet
about scams and touts in India – taxi drivers and hotel owners who
will say anything to get you into their taxi – so I was ready for
this. I waved him off and said, “Nice try, but I'm not falling for
that one!” Well, we made our way into the tunnel for the metro,
and what did we see? Yellow tape and a sign saying Closed for
Repair. Sheepishly, we turned
around and exited the tunnel, only to run into the same taxi driver
waiting for us with a victorious smirk on his face, “So where was
it you wanted to go?” Determined not to let the taxi driver win,
we opened the guide book and considered our next best option—there
was a bus line that went directly to the train station. Score.

When we arrived at the
train station we got out of the bus with all of our bags and
descended into what I can only describe as a sea of chaos and energy.
Maybe it was the lack of sleep or the smog preventing my brain from
getting enough oxygen, but everything seemed to be blurring in motion
around me as I put one tentative step in front of the other in the
crowd. Taxi drivers beckoned us to their cars, a cacophony of horns
molested our eardrums, and every direction I turned my large backpack
seemed to whack another miniature Indian woman in the face. Like
when you're drowning in an ice cold river, the only way to move, it
seemed, was to simply stop struggling and surrender to the current.
So we followed the flow of bodies downstream and eventually found
ourselves standing in front of the New Delhi train station.

In the train station,
there were people everywhere. Men squatted on the cement eating
puris and samosas, while women slept with their babies on fabrics
laid out on the grimy floor. We needed to find the ticket counter
and inquire about a special category of tickets called the “tourist
quota.” We knew that all of the general tickets had been sold out
on all of our trains, thus our only remaining hope was to secure
“tourist quota” tickets, which are apparently withheld for people
like us to plan last minute trips. This, we quickly realized, would
be nearly impossible. There seemed to be no information of any kind
anywhere. Most of the signs were written in Hindi, and the giant
window that said “Tickets” had only one useless attendant who
only knew how to say “fill out a ticket inquiry form” and with
whom you had to press your ear up to the little hole in the
separating glass pane to even understand. We needed to get out of
there.

We decided to make our
way to the hotel, regroup a bit, and come back when we were a little
more clear-minded. So...hotel. According to the map, we just needed
to follow the street we came in on, and veer right, then left, then
right again, and it would be there. No problem. Well, we got to the
street and were quickly enveloped in the raging river again. Car's
honked past us, taxi drivers yelled at us, upset that we were walking
rather than using their services, and more tiny women fell victim to
my large backpack. We started one way, then turned the map around,
and went back the other way. We quickly realized that, even if it
was only a few blocks away, we had no idea where we were going, and
amidst the chaos in the street we were not going to figure it out any
time soon. We decided to step into the relative comfort of an
auto-rickshaw. Surely he would know where our hotel is. I said,
“Hotel Delhi Continental” thinking that there can only be one
Delhi Continental, and that's when I realized our rickshaw driver was
a feeble old man who didn't speak a lick of English. He hacked up a
loogie as if he were summoning it from the deepest recesses of his
lungs and shot a black stream of betel leaf juice onto the pavement
so vile that I almost got out of the rickshaw right then. “Yessir,
Delhi Continental. 300 Rupees,” he rasped.

I knew a thing or two
about rickshaw rides in India, and there was no way I was going to
pay 300 Rupees for a 30 second ride to a hotel right around the
corner. I offered 30 Rupees and after a difficult negotiation we
settled on 100 Rs, still what I considered robbery, but we were
desperate. He revved his anemic engine and we pitter-pattered away
in the direction of Delhi Continental. 15 minutes later, we had done
about three u-turns and were in another part of town. Each time I
pleaded with the driver “Delhi Continental, close...you know?
Close? Nearby? Not far? Here?” my attempted Indian accent
thickening with every word in an attempt to get him to understand, he
looked back over his shoulder and said, “yes, yes, Delhi
Continental, Delhi Continental.” I was sure we were not where we
were supposed to be, but we finally pulled up to a large, multi-story
hotel with a ritzy sign and a gate attendant. The driver stopped the
car and said, “Delhi Continental.” The sign didn't say “Delhi
Continental.” We refused to get out. “This isn't Delhi
Continental,” we protested. “Yes, yes, Delhi Continental!”

I had read about this
in the guide book too. It said to be very wary of taxi drivers and
make sure you tell them that you already have reservations at your
hotel, because they will want to take you to the hotel they are
commissioned with. They will even tell you that your hotel is
closed, or doesn't exist in order to get you to go to their hotel. I
was sure that this was what was happening with our inept geriatric
driver. As often happens during disputes on crowded Indian streets,
bystanders began to approach to offer their opinions on the matter.
Another taxi pulled up, a few people appeared out of the woodwork to
hear what was going on, and before I knew it, there was a crowd.

I appealed to the
crowd, proclaiming that we had asked to go to Delhi Continental, and
this hotel clearly was not Delhi Continental. My statement was met
with approval from the onlookers; “it's true,” I could see them
nodding, “this is not Delhi Continental.” It was time, however,
to hear the driver's side of the story. He claimed that this hotel
used to be called
Delhi Continental, and thus he had no fault in the matter. The
driver's defense was also met with approval. Everyone in the crowd
agreed that this hotel, indeed, used to be called Delhi Continental.
So what to do? An idea emerged: “Are you sure you don't want to
just go to this hotel? It's very nice...” “No!” Thus the
onlookers reached a consensus that the best plan would be for us to
pay the driver half of the agreed upon fare, since he didn't
knowingly bring us to the wrong hotel, and then get in a different
rickshaw with a driver who knew where the real Delhi Continental was
located. This seemed a little backwards, but overall was agreeable
for both parties, so we stepped into another rickshaw headed towards
what we thought was the real Delhi Continental.

Surprisingly, this new
driver didn't try to jack up the rates on us, and said he would take
us to Delhi Continental for a very reasonable 30 rupees. Finally, we
thought, an honest driver. A few minutes into the drive, however,
his intentions became clear: he had a a friend who worked at a
tourism booking agency that he'd like us to meet. What a
coincidence! After a brief protest, Hannah and I looked at each
other and realized that, well, we might actually need a tourist
booking agency considering our inability to book anything at the
train station just a few minutes earlier. We agreed and our driver
whisked us away to meet the inimitable Nayeem, of Delhi Tours.

15 minutes later we
were sitting in Nayeem's office sipping on chai and hearing about
tour packages that Nayeem was offering us. For only $400 each, we
could ride camels, stay at budget hotels, and have guaranteed
second-class or A/C chair car train tickets around the country. We
told him that we had already booked a number of hotel and only want
the train tickets. This was a hard sell, but we eventually were able
to reach an agreement with Nayeem, and booked all of our trains, a
camel safari, and a few other bells and whistles for $200 each. We
shook hands with the jolly fat man, paid him in cash, and got in the
taxi that he had personally arranged to take us to Delhi Continental
to drop off our things, and then take us on a tour of the city that
day!

When we finally made
our long-awaited arrival at the real Delhi
Continental, we were met with some disappointing news. They had no
record of the reservation and payment that we had made at agoda.com.
We slumped our heads, tired and defeated. All this time we were
trying to get to Hotel Delhi Continental, and not only did they not
have our reservation, but it was a piece of shit hotel, with loose
tiles, creaky floorboards and no hot water. We did everything we
could, we lamented together, but Round 1 went to India. We forked
over the cash for another room and slept for the next three hours.
When we woke up, we reassured ourselves, we would take on India with
a newfound energy!